Blaming publicists and Miley’s handlers, Billy Ray gives an anguished interview in GQ’s March issue, where he adds he wishes “Hannah Montana” never happened.

“I hate to say it, but yes, I do. I’d take it back in a second,” said Billy Ray, who is divorcing Miley’s mother, Tish.

Reflecting on Miley’s controversial moments — including seductive photos on the Internet, pole-dancing at the Teen Choice Awards, and posing for Vanity Fair draped in a sheet — Cyrus says he should have been more strict, and accuses her handlers for going too far to promote her, and then using him as the fall guy.

He tells GQ, “Every time the train went off the track . . . her people, or as they say in today’s news, her handlers, every time they’d put [the blame on] me . . . I took it because I’m her daddy . . . OK, nail me to the cross.

“I’m scared for her. She’s got a lot of people around her that’s putting her in a great deal of danger. I want to get her sheltered from the storm.”

Talking about Miley’s 18th birthday party at LA bar Trousdale, he says, “You know why I didn’t go? Because they were having it in a bar. It was wrong. It was for 21 years old and up . . . all them people, they all wanted me to fly out so that then when all the bad press came they could say, ‘Daddy endorsed this stuff.’ I started realizing I’m being used.”

Then photos surfaced of Miley smoking the legal herb salvia from a bong. Billy Ray, who gave the interview to GQ’s Chris Heath five days after the photos emerged, says he hadn’t spoken to Miley since, but confronted one of her handlers: “They told me it was none of my business.”

But he admits, “I should have said, ‘Enough is enough — it’s getting dangerous and somebody’s going to get hurt’ . . . Honestly, I didn’t know the ball was out of bounds until it was way up in the stands somewhere.”

Cyrus described his communication with Miley as “good enough to know it could be a lot better.” Her rep didn’t get back to us.